Members of the Central Park Five, who were wrongly convicted of rape and assault, spoke at the Democratic Convention on Friday, blasting former President Trump for calling for their execution.
Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise, Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson appeared on stage with civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton and delivered captivating speeches to the audience.
“45 wanted to keep us alive. He wanted to kill us. Today we are acquitted,” Salam, now a New York City council member, said of Trump.
“He has never changed and he never will change. He thinks hatred is what drives America. It’s not,” he added.
Wise noted that President Trump spent thousands of dollars to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for the execution of the group.
“We were innocent kids,” Wise said.
“Vice President Harris has also worked hard to make things more fair, and I am confident she will do the same as president,” Wise added.
In 1989, Trump took out a full-page ad in a New York newspaper calling for the death penalty for five boys between the ages of 14 and 16 who were later convicted of raping and assaulting a young woman while she was jogging in Central Park, a high-profile case.
The boys’ 1990 convictions were overturned after convicted murderer Matias Reyes confessed to the crime through DNA evidence.
President Trump has refused to apologize in recent years for the group’s calls for executions.
The appearance of members of the Central Park Five reflected the former president’s efforts to garner support from black voters ahead of the November election, despite his controversial questioning of Harris’ mixed-race heritage.
President Biden Earned 87 percent Seventy percent of black voters supported Harris in the 2020 presidential election, and she will need to perform at least as well as that to beat Trump in November.
